Let a property manager maintain your investment home

You have a property investment dream – it involves buying a handful of beautiful, modern homes, finding perfect tenants immediately, and letting them cover the mortgage payments while leaving you with a little extra to play with each month. Eventually, you’ll have enough saved to go travelling or retire early and spend lots of time with your family. What a relaxing lifestyle.

Of course, that’s not the reality for most property investors. Owning real estate and managing multiple tenancies is a hands-on job, and it won’t always go to plan. Sometimes dealing with just one investment home is too much for the average investor to handle by themselves, and that’s where a property manager comes in handy.

Taking the reins of your investment properties

If you aren’t in the real estate game yet, you’ll need to buy an investment home on the Gold Coast. Your relationship with a property manager can start here – they’ll guide you toward the most suitable purchase for your needs and your budget. You may want a home with a high rental yield so you can pay off your mortgage quickly and gain equity that you can use to buy a second investment. Alternatively, you could be after something in a high-growth area so you can sell for a tidy profit in five years and move onto a more lucrative property.

The local experts at Ray White Surfers Paradise know the market and will work with you to find out what you’re after. Once you’ve bought, it’s time to hand the reins over and let them deal with the day-to-day operations of real estate investing. That includes:

• Finding tenants and maintaining sound relationships with them,
• Collecting rent and chasing any late payments,
• Sorting out property maintenance (sometimes urgently),
• Dealing with any tenancy disputes, and
• Organising the end of a tenancy and the start of the next one.

In order for your investment to be worthwhile, you’ll need your tenancy rate to be higher than your vacancy rate. When nobody is living in your home, you aren’t going to be making money, and you’ll have to cover the mortgage payments out of your own account. When you have a good tenant who is tidy, pays on time and maintains the home to a high standard, you want them to stick around. Your property manager can make sure they’re content with the current situation and alert you if anything changes.

If property investing isn’t your full-time occupation, you’ll likely still be holding down a career. You won’t have time to keep up with your accounts and chase any late payments, let alone deal with all the early morning phone calls telling you about a leaky pipe that needs to be repaired immediately. When you put a property manager in charge of your investment (or investments), you don’t have to worry about any of that.

What can a property manager advise you about?

A property manager’s prowess doesn’t stop at looking after tenancies and collecting rent. As we’ve already mentioned, they can advise you about where is best to buy depending on your needs. What’s more, they know what tenants need in a rental home.

The Gold Coast has a unique climate, so tenants love the option of turning on a central air-conditioning unit to cool down in the hottest parts of the year. If you buy a home without air-con, fitting a unit could improve your chances of finding the right tenant. Any renovations you’re planning should also be run past your property manager – people want updated kitchens and bathrooms first and foremost, and if you’re planning on doing the landscaping before these vital improvements, you might be without tenants a while longer than expected.

Residential property investment has a lot of potential to improve your income, but unless you have a truckload of time on your hands, you’ll need some professional assistance. For more information about working with an experienced, local property manager, get in touch with Ray White Surfers Paradise today.